Merf. Thinking is Hard.Some amazing tidbits, and by amazing I mean unreal:
The anti-white language that transfuses the piece ignores the full scope of the white hegemonic capitalist patriarchy that bell hooks writes about. It also ignores the fact that oppression isn’t a feature limited european modernity, and can be carried independently of any experience with colonialism.
Poor whites, white women, and white queers (which I use in the reclaimed sense to mean LGBTQO cultures, IE queer theory) are all equal victims of cultural appropriation, just as people of color also participate in colonization and violently appropriate others cultures.
It would make more sense to articulate appropriation in its most exploitative forms, which destroys the historical confection between culture and it’s originators. In that way we can understand that all people are victims of cultural appropriation.
Ultimately, I think Spivak is right that love must be part of the demonstrative act.
I don’t think scholars and critics should attack cultural exchanges, but instead we should be rebuilding meaning into those interactions and exchanges. A remix of commercialization, appropriation, imagination, reclamation, liberation, and love.
ETA: I’m declaring open season on this thread.
What the fuck did I just read?
Exactly.
That last statement is really awesome though. Like, someone actually strung those words together and thought it made sense.
That’s why I need some white persons to go in there and dig in.
Bolding mine. I don’t have access to my usual array of GIFs right now because of tech issues (new computer mysteries), but what in the righteous fuck is this bullshit paragraph. How can a goddamn white person claim that poor white people, white ladies and queers (OP better be queer as FUCK to be calling us fucking queers and justifying it as “reclaimed” because SERIOUSLY ASJKLFSHD) experience EQUAL cultural appropriation?! Who appropriates culture from poor people?! I’m gonna need to see some citations here, motherfucker. Even some anecdotal evidence. Come at me.
As far as queer culture, the only instance of appropriation that I can think of is fucking Madonna back in the 80s, with Vogue, but that wasn’t even from general queer culture. Vogue-ing came from the drag balls. Watch Paris is Burning and suck my dick.
Lastly, to say that this is anything like what POC (or ethnic groups like the Roma) experience as far as cultural appropriation and erasure is the shittiest bullshit that ever shit itself all over my screen. God fucking damn it. Ugh. When straight people start getting tattoos of pink lamdas or Matthew Shepard on themselves and saying it’s because they “respect Queers’ culture” then we can talk.
So just ya’ll know, my comment thread is still suspiciously empty. I know I could tear him apart myself if I really wanted, but I was hoping for more than just one white person to rip this little shit apart.
I mean there is MORE to chew on if you click through. I only copied-pasted the more egregious bits.
